VATICAN CITY, VATICAN — Since the early 1980’s, fundamental Christians have largely affiliated themselves with the Republican Party. In that decade, Ronald Reagan rode the wave of the so-called Moral Majority to the White House in two elections, and since then when it comes to politics and religion in the United States, the GOP has held quite a grip on the country’s Christendom. It was a match made in Heaven, so to speak, for years and years as religious leaders in churches all over the world seemed to keep aligning themselves more and more with traditional, Republican values. On subjects from abortion to climate change, it seemed that the Republican platform fit perfectly with the modern interpretation of what Christianity means in terms of political policies, but all that is about to change, and the center of this religious revolution is none other than the Head Guy With Big Hats on His Head, Pope Francis.
In a leaked encyclical due to be published soon, Pope Francis will make the case for why humanity must act urgently on climate change. He writes that the “irresponsible use and abuse of the goods that God placed” on Earth is something that we all should be ashamed of and halt immediately. He also writes that “livelihoods depend heavily on nature reserves” and therefore those he chides for “making the problems or hiding the symptoms” bear the responsibility with the rest of us to clean it up.
Many conservative politicians here in the United States have reacted with outrage to the Pope’s impending admonishment for climate stewardship. “Who the heck does this guy think he is,” 2016 presidential hopeful Rick Santorum asked the press at a recent campaign stop. “He’s supposed to be working for the Lord, and that means obviously helping corporate America sock away more and more money while damaging more and more of our environment. Bad form, Pope Franky, bad form, I say.”
In a taped response for his Holy Roller YouTube channel, Pope Francis addressed Santorum’s criticism directly. “Dicky Santorum asks the world who I think I am,” Francis says in the short clip. “I’ll tell you who I am. I am a Christian who has read his Bible thoroughly enough to remember all the passages about our responsibility — handed to us by God herself — to take care of all that has been provided to us.” The pope also says in the video that he isn’t “one of those Christians who cherry-picks lessons from the Bible” and that “Dicky should probably focus on the massive log in his eyes before he attempts to remove any splinters from someone else’s eyes.”
“The funny thing is,” Pope Francis says at one point in his YouTube response, “I believe in the Virgin Birth for Chrissakes. I literally believe that a 14-year-old girl was impregnated by the Spirit of God and I even believe that pregnancy led to the birth of the literal son of God. That is some far-fetched Lord of the Rings shit, and yet guess what? I’m not dumb enough to ignore what 97% of climate scientists agree to be solid scientific fact. Of course, that might be because instead of shunning education as the tool of the devil and evil elitist liberals, I embraced it and actually got a fucking science degree, but hey, what do I know, right?”
The Pope also made sure to reiterate that “taking care of all that God has given us is not a liberal conspiracy, it is a command from the Heavenly Host themselves,” and that “it’s actually very conservative to, you know, conserve shit.” Pope Francis chided American Republicans for “thinking Christianity is all about keeping gays from the buttsex or women from the abortions.” While Francis said “that shit is way important and believe me as progressive as I am, I’m not about to go full modernity on everyone and insist they treat the gays with complete equality or anything,” he also admonished his flock for “thinking you can just rape, pillage and plunder the natural resources on this one, rare planet we call home and not have dire consequences for it.”
